Educating youth, empowering parents, and supporting schools.

Sex Ed in Garfield County

The Garfield County Teen Pregnancy Prevention Coalition pursued the Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) grant funds due to the high number of teen pregnancies in the county and the belief that education for all students could decrease these numbers. Garfield County PREP is a collaboration of schools, community based organizations and agencies, government departments, concerned citizens and teens working to provide prevention education and resources to parents and teens on healthy sexual development, healthy relationships, and sexual health issues.

Draw The Line, Respect The Line is a progression of lessons delivered by classroom teachers in grades 6-8. Be Proud! Be Responsible! is delivered once in high school during a student’s freshman or sophomore health or science class. Both curricula include role plays, activities and discussions that stress skill building aimed at risk avoidance. Street Smart is the newest curriculum to Garfield County and will be taught at Bridges and Yampah Mountain High Schools. Copies of Draw The Line, Respect The Line and Be Proud! Be Responsible! facilitator manuals can be viewed at any Garfield County library branch.

Short Term Goals

Increase knowledge about healthy sexuality and relationships

Increase the intention to abstain from sexual behavior

Increase the intention to use condoms when deciding to become sexually active

Long Term Goals

Decrease teen pregnancy in Garfield County by 2%

What is PREP?

The Personal Responsibility Education Program was authorized by Congress as part of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as a way to help reduce teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), as well as their negative consequences and associated risk behaviors.

Colorado is one state PREP grantee with three counties originally being sub-awarded grant funds; Garfield, Denver and Huerfano. Colorado Sexual Health Initiative grantees were allowed discretion in designing their programs, they all are aligned with four primary expectations:

Be evidence-based

Provide education on both abstinence and contraceptive use

Target their programming to high-risk populations, such as youth residing in geographic areas with high teen birth rates, adjudicated youth, youth in foster care, minority youth, and pregnant or parenting teens

Educate youth on at least three of six adulthood preparation topics

Garfield County PREP focuses on

Healthy Life Skills

Healthy Relationships and

Adult-Child Communication

as their selected topics. One way PREP works to increase adult-child communication is by offering our Beyond the Birds and the Bees workshop to anyone interested in becoming a truly trusted adult. This interactive workshop is appropriate for parents but it specifically designed for professionals who work with youth in systems of care.

“Garfiled [County] really deserves to be commended on their consistently strong performance over the past few years. They’ve expanded drastically, brought on many new facilitators, had turnover, and still manage to have consistent and very, very strong outcome data.”

Primetime Research & Evaluation

The mission of Colorado Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) is to increase young people’s access to comprehensive sexual health education and foster connections to trusted adults.